The Day The World Went Cockamamie
by Cat In My Fridge
Summary: Chuck x Nate. "Wanna make out?"


**Author's Notes: **I have been writing fan fiction for over 4 years now, but seeing as how I usually write them for video games ('cause, you know, I'm nerdy like that), this is my first, and quite likely _last_, Gossip Girl fanfic. I'm quite pleased with this fic and hope you will enjoy it as well – I tried to give it an eccentric, distinctly American feel and hope I succeeded. Please leave feedback, but remember that flames will be used to cook the boys dinner. :-)

**Pairing:** Chuck/Nate. Yes. Chuck/Nate. Yeah, the_ gay_ thing, right.

**Timeline: **pre-show.

**Warnings:** Slash, a little language. Other than that? Kissy-kissy, all else you'll missy! (my _God_, am I a poet in the making or what? No, don't answer that...)

And without further ado...

**+The Day the World Went Cockamamie +**

**+ A Chuck/Nate One-Shot +**

"_Wanna make out?"_

For Nathaniel Fitzwilliam Archibald, life had always been easy.

Mapped out as meticulously as the drawing of the first vagina he'd ever seen in that gyno book he had found in his mother's study at age 5 and royally freaked out, Nate's life had always been what it was supposed to be: clear, ordered and following its pre-destined path with unwavering certainty.

The theory that there was such a thing as hues of gray interwoven in the ever-changing pictures of life had been one of the many things Nate had always preferred to think of as propaganda sprouted by the powerless and undeserving. For as long as he could remember, there had always been clearly-labelled mental boxes that everything he encountered in life could be neatly stashed into.

There was the white box, home of everything nice and pleasant (the twinkle in Blair's eyes when she smiled, parties, tax cuts) and then there was the black box (Democrats, welfare roaches... drugs_, in theory_) and it wasn't until that chilly autumn day in October nearly 17 years after the initial creation of the black and white boxes that Nate, for the first time, realized that he maybe, just maybe, he would soon have to start thinking about getting another box. That maybe he, handsome, chiselled, clever, witty, toned, tanning-bed basted, waxed, plucked, moisturized, deodorized, perfumed, _perfect_ Nate Archibald had been missing something all along.

"_Wanna make out?"_

The insane box. The never-before-heard box. The crazy-as-a-bunch-of-sailors-after-a-hundred-years-in-a-_hell_-dimension kind of box. And Nate was pretty sure he'd just found the first permanent resident for his shiny little new box.

Nate's best friend Chuck Bass, eyes focused on the TV, chin propped on his palm, stuffing nuts into his already bulging cheeks, said something that had unleashed nothing short of a tornado at the laws of the Universe as Nate had known them.

"Wanna make out?"

And here goes...

"_What_?" Nate hissed, gaping at his best friends out of large blue eyes. "You-you-you... you _**what**_?"

"Look, Nate," Chuck replied, eyes still focused on the TV, "if you don't want to, that's fine. It was just an idea. We're cool." He grinned. "Hey, look at this chick's b -"

"Hey come on. Wait a minute. I request a time-out!" Nate said, pressing his fingers against his eyes as though in great pain and finally causing the dark-haired boy to tear away his eyes from television set. Nate levelled his blue gaze on Chuck's. "Do you realize what you just did to me? You.. you!" He ran his fingers through his blonde hair nervously, then let his arms fall with an exasperated sigh. "Oh God, no matter which way I turn it, I just can't _believe_ you just said that!"

Chuck rolled his eyes, then focused them to stare straight into Nate's eyes, a crooked smile playing around his lips. "Nate, I asked you if you wanted to _make out_ with me – _not_ if you wanted to head over to Times Square and bawl the Tarzan song dressed in loincloths."

Nate's flustered expression slipped for a moment, replaced by a dark scowl. "It's not really helping your cause that both of these scenarios are _equally as damn absurd_."

Chuck groaned, letting his eyes dart back to the television set in front of him. "Fine. Be that way then."

Nate wasn't about to let it go, however. Things Nate Archibald hated far outnumbered the things he loved, and not understanding things had always ranked exhilaratingly high on the list of every rich man's pet peeves. So, eyebrows perked, eyes wide and genuine confusion written all across his handsome features, he asked, "but, _why_?"

Chuck sighed, turning his head once more to look at his friend. "I already told you, if you don't want to -"

"It's not about me wanting to or not!" Nate exclaimed, cutting the air with his hands. "I want to know why you would ever... you would ever... have such an idea." He paused, licking his lips, red surfacing on his cheeks. "Jeez, man, are you _crazy_?"

"Says the guy who's about to hyperventilate like a playmate on ecstasy."

"Which I consider a completely reasonable reaction if your best friend – who by the way, is a _guy_ if it hasn't so far come to your attention, which I guess is entirely possible seeing as how you won't tear your eyes from the _goddamn TV_," with that he snatched the remote control from out of Chuck's hand and unceremoniously switched off the TV, " - asks to _make out with you_?"

"Careful there," Chuck said, deadpan, grabbing a magazine to look through. "I think you're nearing your annual word quota."

"Chuck!" Nate growled, snatching the magazine out of Chuck's hands and hurling it at the floor. "I just don't get it! I'm a guy!"

Chuck, still sitting turned to Nate who was towering over the boy. Hints of amusement snaked over the brunette boy's entirely too calm face. "So it appears. Your point being?"

"Well. I'm not gay," Nate said, as though that explained everything.

"Well, neither am I." Chuck smirked. "You like that, huh, Nate Archibald?" His voice was like honey, if honey could burn. "Categorizing like that. Gays kiss other guys. Straight guys don't kiss other guys. Everybody is either gay or straight." He stood up abruptly, first hints of anger zig-zagging over his face as he stared right into Nate's eyes. "Isn't that how it works for you?"

Something in Nate's eyes changed. "Fine, you kiss guys and girls or whatever, and supposedly you're not gay." A sarcastic smile crept up on his face. "Is there anything you _don't_ kiss? Like, do you kiss dogs?!"

Chuck shrugged. "It's been known to happen."

"Oh, God," Nate muttered. "This whole conversation is just all kinds of wrong."

It was with a smirk that hung loosely around his lips that Chuck regarded Nate but it was with all the countenance of his high upbringing that he turned around and would have left if only it hadn't been for Nate's hand wrapping itself around Chuck's shoulder. "Where do you think you're going?" Nate hissed.

Chuck turned around, rolling his eyes. "Oh, sorry, the overwhelming love brimming in the air must have slipped my mind. What about the atmosphere in here could _possibly _make me want to leave?"

The blonde narrowed his eyes, anger seeping into his spine and tightening his muscles. "I just don't _understand," _he stated with all the affirmation of a man who believed everything that went wrong was principally someone else's fault.

Chuck's eyes glinted. "Man, I respect you and all, but you not understanding shit is hardly so newsworthy as to even make it on _Gossip Girl_."

That's when the last twig on Nate Archibald's tree of patience finally snapped, and the crack was loud enough to reverberate inside Nate's ears long after he'd stormed forward, grabbed Chucks's collar and all but ran him into the wall. "_What did you say_?" Nate growled through gritted teeth.

Surprise was spelled in bold letters over Chuck's face as he stared at his face, soothing the worst fumes of the anger demon thrashing about. "What did you say, you..." he trailed off, grip around Chuck's collar loosening as his mind was wiped clean by the broom that was Chuck's intriguing eyes.

Eyes like sapphires, jades or emeralds were not only a trite cliché in bad romance novels, to Nate they were also horribly overrated. Since he was little he could remember having preferred deep dark eyes – sucking pools of darkness that bled seamlessly into the pupil. Eyes like Blair's. Eyes like... well, like Chuck's.

"Look, this is _your_ problem, not mine," Chuck said, evil glinting in his eyes, "I told you it was just a suggestion. If you don't want to, _fine_ – don't slit my throat over it. I don't care _that _much."

The aggression seeped out of Nate and shame hurried in to replace it. He took a step back, holding up both palms, "All right, sorry, man." He dropped his hands while he caught his lower lip between his teeth, starting to gently nibble on it. "But, I just don't get it. Are you, like, _attracted_ to me?"

Chuck made an annoyed sound from the back of his throat, straightening his clothes. "Nate," he said languidly, "Didn't you see there was nothing good on TV? I was bored."

Nate frowned. "You do not kiss people because you are _bored_! Or when you are already in a relationship!"

Chuck rolled his eyes and said, deadpan, "Funny, because I dimly seem to re-call you dancing the tonsil tango with that blonde chick two months ago while Blair was in L.A. for the weekend. Oh, and she had on a skirt so short that we almost got to witness the first public gynaecological exam of the Upper East Side. _Real_ classy."

Nate was momentarily flustered. "That was different!" His voice sounded less convinced as he added, "I was drunk."

"Nate, according to the general consensus of the public, cheating while drunk is _still_ very much cheating." Chuck flashed his friend a grin. "I heard it on Oprah."

Was it possible to get a migraine from frustration? "Chuck! You're-you're.. still my best friend." A glance down the brunette's body. "And _male_."

"Very much so," Chuck agreed, nodding busily.

"But still you asked me if I want to make out with you? _Just like that_?"

A smirk pulled up the edges of Chuck's lips and when he spoke, his voice was low, intimate, with just a taint of mockery, "You do know that it's _kissing_ and not advanced calculus, do you?"

Nate's eyebrows slid together. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"There's no formula, Nate," the smaller boy sighed, making no secret of his assessment of Nate's mental capabilities. He met Nate's eyes, full-front and if Nate hadn't been shaking from all the force of his surprise, there was a good chance he would have flinched at being confronted with those deep, dark eyes.

Chuck leaned forward, his breath sweeping over his friend's face as he gently nudged the next words into Nate's ears, "Attraction isn't something you can store away neatly into your little Nate Archibald boxes. Attraction, it's irrational. Sometimes feral. _Always_ impulsive." Chuck grinned that little smug smile of his that Nate had always wished he could imitate. The blonde saw himself unable to do anything other than stare at how the sucking dark pools and the smug smirk on Chuck's lips seemed to be having a conversation in a language Nate couldn't understand.

The moment was broken as Chuck straightened his back, bringing distance between the two boys that Nate hadn't realized he craved. "But, you know," Chuck leered, eyes dancing, "seeing as how you're so interested in the whys and whats, it almost seems like _you_ want to make out, too."

Nate was distant as thoughts danced through his mind, stumbling from one wall to the other as though caught up in a bizarre ping-pong match. What Chuck had said did make sense - in a strange, twisted sort of way. He'd always thought kissing to be something that had to be done with Blair only, but then, as his little detour into the cherry chapstick adorned mouth of that blonde chick whose name he had long since forgotten was a clear testament to, not even he could be trusted with sticking to the moral compass that had been lined out for him since birth.

Attraction, was it really impulsive, as Chuck had said? Was kissing another guy really not necessarily a gay thing to do? Did thinking that Chuck's eyes were intriguing and his lips soft and pouty mean that he really _was_ attracted to his best friend, however remote the attraction may be? Was... was suggesting to _make out_, as Chuck had so without poetic zest put it, really such an absurd thing to be doing?

_No,_ something in his head called and Nate shook his head. This was crazy. Absolutely, completely, a hundred percent batshit cockamamie _insane_. Chuck had simply had too much to smoke and was pushing the limits of being a self-proclaimed eccentric – there simply was no other explanation and -

and Nate never got to finish his internal monologue because it was right then and there that Chuck, with a sly smile playing around his lips, leaned down and pressed said lips firmly against Nate's.

And Nate's brain, in a word, went ajddjfxz;;;fjdjsj.

Chuck opened his mouth against Nate's and one quick, glistening tongue darted out, trailing along the bottom lip of the stunned blonde, then he brought the soft rosy lip between his teeth and nibbled on it. Nate stood there, frozen like a statue, eyes wide open as he stared straight into Chuck's eyes, which were as open as his and looked huge and imposing up so close. His lips were hot and soft and when Chuck's tongue probed into his mouth and started to rub itself against Nate's like a cat in heat, Nate realized that his tongue – that _Chuck's_ tongue – was also a lot larger and rougher than any other tongues that had ever been allowed to penetrate the Archibald's mouth. Nate could feel Chuck smirking against his lips as he rhythmically opened and closed his mouth, his tongue running along Nate's teeth, snuggling up against his own immobile tongue, tracing the lines of his cheeks.

After ten seconds or perhaps a hundred or a thousand, Chuck closed his mouth, placed one more chaste kiss lips on Nate's lips, and then stepped away.

"Now that wasn't so horrible now, was it?" Chuck muttered, their lips still so very close, breaths fused together. "And it worked." While Nate, being so close to the other boy, could not see his lips, he could tell that he was grinning – the smirk was shining brilliantly right out of the depths of his eyes. "I'm no longer bored. Let's call this a success, shall we?"

And it was with these words which cut right through Nate like a butcher's knife through organs that the spell over Nate was broken and the realization of what just happened crashed down on the Archibald like a tidal wave.

And Nate's eyes widened and his jaw dropped open while a multitude of different thoughts were crashing into each other like bumper cars. "I... _**Oh my God**_!" Nate gasped, wiping his mouth and Chuck knew that he would have spit if only he hadn't been raised to believe that his shit didn't stink. "What-- uhh..." His jaw snapped shut with an audible click, visibly unable to come up with anything to say, eyes revealing an internal war that just started to wage.

Chuck smiled pleasantly. "T'was a pleasure, Nate Archibald." He then looked down at his watch, exclaiming in mock surprise, "oh gee, look at the time! Time flies by when you're having a good time, doesn't it?" Chuck gave Nate one more smirk before he turned around on his heels, grabbed his jacket and shrugged into it on his way. With one hand already grasped around the door knob, he turned around once more, letting his eyes rest on Nate Archibald, who – eyes opaque and glazed-over, skin flushed an enticing pink, chest heaving in erratic breathing – looked the most dazzled Chuck had ever seen him. He looked like the man who, in one single instant, had found out that the life he had been living up until this point had been the biggest lie since Jennifer Love Hewitt claiming to be a size 2.

"Tell Blair I said hi," Chuck smiled. With a soft click, the door fell shut behind him and Nathaniel Fitzwilliam Archibald's life suddenly was not so easy any more.

**--fin**


End file.
